Thanks to the courtesy of Professor Robert Colson, Zicklin Forensic Accounting Association had the pleasure of hosting Vincent Love as a guest speaker on March 10th, 2016. Mr. Love who claims that is not a lawyer, has served as a CPA witness expert in federal and state courts as well as in arbitrations and hearings across the U.S. With over 48 years of experience in financial services and a very deep understanding of accounting, he was happy to share with the students examples of defense work and malpractice litigations he conducted and educate the attendees on the need of lifetime learning.As an “old school” accountant, Mr. Love have seen it all but it has never stopped him from learning new things. Currently, he is a part of the Sustainability Committee at the NY State Society, something you would not expect from a person that started his career in times when accounting was much simpler, with very little GAAP standards. Everybody enjoyed his anecdotes about old accounting practices and learned that even though he did not like writing in the past, now he’s an author of a book on accounting for lawyers and he has published many articles in the CPA Journal, which are used by others in their practices. “What Due Care Mean for CPA” is one of much importance because, as he claims, lack of Due Care comes up in every case. As an author, he couldn’t stress enough the importance of writing in accounting and encouraged students to learn how to write and better themselves at it.

Education, training and experience as an auditor, are the factors that allowed him to become an expert and testify in courts. Among many others, Mr. Love was able to share with the listeners his cases of employee theft, bookkeepers fraud, and even litigations involving well known personas, such as Anthony Quinn and Don King. His extensive knowledge on fraud also reflects in his article “Audits Responsibility For Detecting Fraud” and he believes that fraud will always be present. Since integrity and objectivity are the traits of an expert witness, it would be wise to heed his warning.